ASI & ISC/SCI 2016 Conference—Speaker Biographies
Meral Alakus After finishing high school at the American Collegiate Institute in Izmir, Turkey, I went to USA for my university education: Chapman College in Orange California to receive my B.A. in English Literature in 1961 and to University of Illinois to get my MSc in Library Science. Ever since then I have worked both in Turkey and Halifax, Canada, for almost 45 years, and have also done some freelance work both in Turkey and Canada. I was a member of ISC until I returned to Turkey in 2013. I am interested in management of information and particularly indexing information.
Lee Berry is a Program Associate in the Center for Oral History at the Chemical Heritage Foundation, a Philadelphia-based non-profit organization which focuses on the history of science and engineering. Since its inception, the Chemical Heritage Foundation has been committed to conducting, transcribing, preserving and providing access to oral histories with academic, industrial and government scientists and engineers. Ms. Berry is a novice indexer who dreams of improving the indexing of the individual oral histories in this important collection and perhaps someday of undertaking a cumulative index.
Cheryl Caballero holds a library studies degree from Dalhousie University. She has been an index and reference officer at Hansard Reporting and Interpretation Services for the past 4 years.
Meg Daniel has been working full-time at William Mitchell College of Law for twenty years, and indexing legal and scholarly textbooks for the past ten years. Born and raised in Washington state, she migrated to Minnesota after almost 6 years in the USAF as a medic. Working at a local hospital full time while going to college full time to earn her BA in accounting and at the same time raising her son as a single parent, she learned the meaning of diligent, focused work. The community of legal scholars at William Mitchell are both her support system and her inspiration
for intellectual stamina and diligence.
Lisa DeBoer is the owner of DeBoer Indexing, specializing in scholarly indexing in the humanities and social sciences. Lisa is also an associate of Colleen Dunham Indexing and serves as the President of the Western New York Chapter of ASI. A book indexer since 2010, Lisa also has worked as a database indexer and librarian. She completed the UC Berkeley course on indexing, and has Master’s degrees in Women’s History and Library and Information Science.
Margaret de Boer is a freelance indexer from Toronto. Twenty years in broadcasting and newspaper indexing offers useful background for the political science manuscripts that she indexes now. She currently serves on the ISC/SCI executive as co-president. This isn't her first foray into team indexing and she's excited to work with another amazing group of indexers! Margaret is honoured to work on these important volumes.
Jenny de Wet has a masters degree in Information Science in Indexing, and more than 40 years’ experience in technical, medical and business indexing, together with academic lecturing experience at two South African universities. She also has extensive training experience in courses presented by the Association of Southern African Indexers and Bibliographers (ASAIB), and has worked as a Computer software consultant in ICT with a special interest in Search Engine Optimization and e-book.
S. Anne Fifer is a freelance indexer providing back-of-book indexing since 2008. She teaches medical terminology courses at a local community college to fill in between indexing jobs. Her education includes medicine with specialty in neurology, and epileptology. Areas of interest include neuroanatomy and neurosciences as well as general medicine and health sciences, and experimental/physiological psychology. Other special interests and hobbies include wine, food, cooking/culinary arts, gardening, organic farming, art/crafts, birds, and pets.
Kathie Klee is a graduate of the 3-part ASI Course, and has been indexing since 2013. She's a firm believer in the value of networking and continuing education as a means of getting ahead in indexing. She lives near Philadelphia, PA, and is a member of the New York City chapter, which she credits with a string of job referrals. She has attended ASI webinars on Cindex Tips: Groups and Labeling; Successful Subheadings; and the Business of Indexing. Chicago will be her third ASI conference. Kathie has a BA and MA in English and an MS in Library Science.
Chuck Knapp is the Director of Taxonomy & Indexing at Bloomberg BNA, a leading source of legal and regulatory information for attorneys and other professionals. He has been with Bloomberg BNA’s Taxonomy & Indexing department, in metropolitan Washington, DC, for over twenty years. His group produces indexes and applies taxonomy tagging to legal news and reference content across a broad range of legal specialties. Subjects include tax, corporate law, employment, environment, health care, intellectual property, and many others. He leads the team that developed and maintains Bloomberg BNA’s taxonomy. Previously, he was the indexer for U.S. Law Week—Supreme Court Today, and he created the index for BNA's Health Law & Business Series that won the American Association of Law Libraries' 1997 Best New Product award. He led the BNA usability study of Online Indexes versus text-only searching in 2005. He authored I Was A Teenage Indexer Taxonomist about his transformation from indexer to taxonomist, Chapter 3 of Index It Right, Volume 3, Information Today, 2014. He also wrote the chapter on indexing court cases for the book, Indexing Specialties: Law (Peter Kendrick and Enid L. Zafran eds., American Society of Indexers 2001). He is a graduate of the University of Oklahoma School of Law.
Fred Leise serves as the lead content strategist for Potomac Indexing and is an independent taxonomy design consultant, with such clients as HP, Disney, and Oprah.com. He is an ICI-Certified Indexer and has worked as a back-of-book indexer since 1995, specializing in scholarly works in the humanities, as well as East Asian history and culture, international relations, and technical publications.
Frances Lennie is first and foremost an indexer. She is also the developer of CINDEX™ indexing software, presents workshops on the use of the program, and speaks regularly at indexing conferences and meetings held in the United States and international locations.
Heather Hedden is a senior vocabulary editor at Cengage Learning, where she has been editing thesauri from 1996 to 2004 and resuming again at the start of 2014. In the intervening 10 years she worked as a taxonomist in various employed and consulting positions and also did freelance back-of-the-book indexing. Heather teaches an online continuing education workshop on “Taxonomies & Controlled Vocabularies” through Simmons College School of Library and Information Science and an ASI on-demand short course “Practical Taxonomy Creation.” Heather is also author of The Accidental Taxonomist, Indexing Specialties: Web Sites, and chapters in Indexing Names and Index It Right, Volume 2. Heather is a past president of the ASI New England Chapter, a past manager of the ASI Web & Electronic Indexing SIG and the Taxonomies & Controlled Vocabularies SIG, and currently a member of the board of ASI.
Kira Henschel is the publisher of HenschelHAUS Publishing, Inc., a longtime entrepreneur, and a coach for those in publishing fields. She has facilitated the publication of 440 books since starting her company in 2002. Her company has five imprints, a publishing prep school, and a coaching division
Lydia Jones
David Leistensnider, Manager, Technology and Design, has worked in publishing for 20 years. He has been at Pearson since 2007, developing K-12 materials as an editor, content manager, and digital producer.
John Magee is the Director of Indexing and Controlled Vocabulary Services for Cengage Learning. His wide-ranging experience there over the past 20 years covers database indexing, book indexing, vocabulary management, and online product development. He lives with his wife in Wolverine Lake, Michigan, where he has served as Village President since 2006. He claims that a man who can keep an old MGB roadster running at least half of the time can accomplish anything, but we have yet to confirm that his old MGB does in fact run at least half of the time.
The Matrix Group, Int’l. (Glenda Browne, Michele Combs, David K. Ream, Jan Wright, and Pilar Wyman) comprises 4 indexers and 1 software developer from ASI and ANZSI, who have come together to prepare the Matrix documents and to present sessions about ebook indexing. We have worked with the ASI Digital Trends Task Force and EPUB Indexes Working Group, as well as with the ebook indexing tools we describe.
Leoni Z. McVey Coming from a background in educational publishing and teaching, I assumed that all indexers began life in textbook publishing and were born worrying about line lengths, vocabulary, and how best to reach students. As I evolved into an indexer, I realized that education and publishing gave me a foundation for analyzing what and how readers use indexes. In the 30+ years since I first indexed a textbook, I have indexed texts at levels 1-adult and in many disciplines and have written “glindexes” that combine index and glossary entries, have added pronunciation guides, birth/death/reign dates, have italicized, bolded, and capitalized/lowercased hundreds—perhaps thousands—of entries. Textbook content approaches have come and gone, index style preferences have come and gone, and “it depends’s” have come and gone—but the one constant is finding the best way to lead readers to the most important information in a text. This never-ending analysis makes indexing forever fresh.
Ælfwine Mischler completed the Berkeley indexing course in 2014 and has written several indexes for a university press. With a master’s in linguistics and TEFL, she has taught in the US and Egypt, but enjoys editing and indexing more. She has copyedited books and websites on Islam, EFL textbooks, and books on Egyptology. Ælfwine volunteers as a proofreader of Key Words, a peer index reviewer, and the managing editor of the blog of the STC Technical Editing SIG. The best copyeditor on the Nile is now trying to become the best indexer on the Nile.
Mary Newberry has been indexing and editing since 2000, and is past president of the ISC/SCI. Mary works in many disciplines, but is particularly happy when working in the fields of diversity and social justice. She's also worked on a number of large collaborative indexing projects.
Alexandra Peace is a freelance indexer and editor living in the beautiful Annapolis Valley of Nova Scotia. She is on the ISC/SCI executive as the Eastern Representative. Alex was thrilled to work on the TRC Report indexes with fellow indexers.
Jane Plass is a freelance editor and indexer at Info Grooming, as well as associate executive director of Reaching Across Illinois Library System (RAILS). RAILS uses virtual meetings extensively to connect with its 1,300+ member libraries across 27,000 square miles.
Dominique Raccah is the entrepreneurial CEO of Sourcebooks which she founded in 1987. Today, Sourcebooks is one of the largest independent book publishers in the U.S. and is home to dozens of bestselling authors. Growing through small and large innovations, Sourcebooks has repeatedly created new ways for readers to interact with books, from Poetry Speaks (called the “definitive anthology” of poets reading their own work) to Put Me In The Story, the successful app and website that allows you to personalize bestselling books. Today, Dominique is fascinated by the digital transformation of the book and wonders what more the future might hold for books and readers.
David K. Ream is Leverage Technologies’ chief consultant for publishers. He has a M.S. degree in Computer Science from Case Western Reserve University. He has spent over 30 years working with publishers in the areas of typesetting design and production, database creation, editorial systems, and electronic publication design and production. Dave is a co-chair of the IDPF’s EPUB3 Indexes Working Group and chair of ASI’s DTTF.
Since 1995, Gale Rhoades has be distributing and supporting Macrex in North America. Before that she was Executive Director of Fog International Computer Users Group which, under her leadership, grew from 170 users to over 30,000, many of whom were indexers.
Louise Saint-André is a French-language indexer, editor and trainer, who joined ISC/SCI in 2005. While a significant portion of her work pertains to health care, she has, over the years, collaborated on a number of bilingual history books with English-language editors and indexers.
Maria Sullivan Maria A. Sullivan has been indexing since 1988, and working with Indexing Research in offering training and support for CINDEX™ since 1994. In addition, Maria is happy to help other indexers by offering a reasonably priced conversion service for existing indexes. If you have access to the index from an earlier edition of your current project, Maria can turn that into a format that is compatible with your indexing application to use as a springboard for creating the index for the new edition. Maria and her husband Ed live in the Bristol Hills of New York’s Finger Lakes region (wine country!). With their children all grown, they spend as much of their time as possible planting, growing, cutting and arranging flowers; and spoiling two wonderful extra-small horses.
Larry D. Sweazy is a multiple-award author of eleven Western and mystery novels and over sixty nonfiction articles and short stories. He is also a freelance indexer and has written back-of-the-book indexes for over eight hundred and fifty books in nineteen years, which served as inspiration for the Marjorie Trumaine Mystery series. Larry lives in Indiana with his wife, Rose, two dogs and a cat. More information can be found at www.larrydsweazy.com.
Paul R. Sweum, the owner of Top Hat Word & Index out of the Seattle area, provides over 20 years of professional technical communications and writing experience, part of which involves a career as an urban planning professional. He has one foot in publishing, and the other in government documentation. His business blog, The Penny Farthing Commuter, covers industry trends, tech tools, interviews, conferences and other curios. Paul may be found on Twitter @TopHatIndexer....or traveling abroad with his fly fishing rod....or keeping score of a game at a local ballpark.
François Trahan has been an indexer and ISC/SCI member since 2007. Recipient of the 2015 Ewart-Daveluy Indexing Award, he has a great interest in topics related to Indigenous peoples, especially on the Pacific northwest coast.
Sharon Woodhouse is a book publisher, certified professional coach, and owner of Conspire Creative, which offers strategic support for creative, thinking, and publishing people and their enterprises. She started her first publishing company Lake Claremont Press in 1994, known for its high-quality coverage of Chicago topics by Chicago authors with particular Chicago passions, extensive publicity and public outreach, creative sales and marketing, and helping authors make a cottage industry out of their books.
Enid Zafran, a winner of ASI’s Hines Award for outstanding service to the indexing community, has been an active indexer for over twenty-five years, specializing in legal and scholarly texts. Her company, Indexing Partners, located in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, uses a team of indexers as subcontractors. Enid managed ASI’s publications program from 1994 to 2014, producing at least one book per year and often two or three. She has managed one of the largest in-house indexing departments for the Bureau of National Affairs in Washington, DC. Enid writes and edits articles for ASI’s publications, including the “A to Zafran” column in Key Words. She was instrumental in the development and initial organization of the ASI training course. Enid has long mentored a series of newcomers to indexing, providing them with training and often their first paid work, and she has worked tirelessly to promote ASI at every opportunity. Enid has served on the board of ASI for numerous terms, starting in the mid-90s, in the capacities of secretary, president, and director. She has also presented programs at many national conferences. At the chapter level, Enid has served as an officer of the Mid- and South Atlantic Chapter and has been a guest speaker at many of ASI’s chapters.
Gail Zelitzky has owned her own businesses since 1977: first, a multi-state franchise operation, then a worldwide catalog and e-commerce business. Since 2000, she has coached business owners in all stages of growth to make the leap to the next level. She is recognized for her practical, no-nonsense approach, astute perception of issues business owners face, especially women in business, plus her strategic and creative approach to sales and problem-solving.
Important: The speaker lineup is subject to change; be sure to check for updates closer to the conference dates.